Have you noticed that Bitcoin influencers are almost never objective? This is a Pierre Rochard quote from today (but could really be any of the Bitcoin influencers on any given day) "Bitcoin’s November candle was ugly. Lots of uncertainty about USD rate cuts, AI investments, and altcoin leverage. Notice that these are all external factors? Bitcoin’s fundamentals are stronger every day. The long term BTC accumulation thesis is unchanged." So "Bitcoin’s fundamentals are stronger every day... long-term accumulation thesis unchanged." 1) Are Bitcoin’s fundamentals "stronger every day"? Depends what you call a "fundamental". If you actually list them, you get a mixed picture, not a monotonic up-only story. A) Monetary fundamentals (fixed supply, issuance, uptime) Still strong / unchanged: - 21M hard cap still intact. (Context: https://controlplanecapital.com/p/why-bitcoins-21m-cap-is-not-guaranteed ) - Halving schedule intact. - Chain uptime high. - Global awareness higher than ever. These are the only things influencers usually mean when they say "fundamentals". They talk about design, not control surface. But there are other axes they conveniently ignore. B) Censorship resistance & sovereignty This is where things are not "stronger every day": 1. Paperization — A growing chunk of "Bitcoin exposure" sits in: - ETFs - MicroStrategy & treasury cos - Custodial exchanges - Structured products, futures, notes This pushes more BTC into KYC, surveilled, easily frozen pools, and more price discovery into instruments that are trivial to regulate. 2. Self-custody share vs AUM: More normies hold "BTC" via brokerage accounts and apps, not cold storage. That weakens the monetary sovereignty story, even if total holders go up. 3. Node centralization & implementation politics: - Heavy reliance on Bitcoin Core + a tiny dev set, with funding from a small number of entities ( Context: https://controlplanecapital.com/p/how-bitcoins-developers-are-attacking-2a5 ). - Now a split narrative (Core vs Knots) over policy and spam / OP_RETURN / inscriptions. - A non-trivial part of the full-node network sits on centralized cloud providers (AWS, etc.) - Context: https://controlplanecapital.com/p/governments-dont-like-sovereign-bitcoin . 4. Chain bloat / illegal content risk — Inscriptions, arbitrary data, and v30-style policy loosening expand the attack surface: - Legal/regulatory risk for node operators and infra providers. - Easier vectors for spam from actors with deep pockets. From a regulatory capture perspective, that's bearish sovereignty, bullish for "we need to regulate/filter nodes" ( Context: https://controlplanecapital.com/p/governments-dont-like-sovereign-bitcoin ). 5. Bitcoin mining is more centralized than ever. Context: https://controlplanecapital.com/p/bitcoins-mining-centralization-problem These are just a few. Obviously, I won't cover everything in a nostr note. Net: monetary schedule is still clean, but sovereign, censorship-resistant usage is under attack on multiple fronts. That is not a daily increase in "fundamentals". C) Use as medium of exchange vs asset If BTC's real threat is as self-custodied, censorship-resistant MoE, then: - KYC perimeters, FATF travel rule, AML pressure, exchange surveillance ( Context: https://controlplanecapital.com/p/how-governments-and-large-institutions ) - Stablecoins + cards giving people "almost-crypto" UX with fiat rails - Institutional BTC treated as risk asset, not transactional money All of that is pushing BTC away from MoE, toward "digital gold-ish risk asset". So the honest version isn’t "fundamentals stronger every day"; it's: - Monetary design mostly unchanged ( Context: https://controlplanecapital.com/p/how-bitcoins-developers-are-attacking-2a5 ); freedom properties under strategic containment pressure; usage skewed toward paperized SoV, not sovereign MoE. D) "Multiple implementations" as a positive It's good that not 100% of nodes run Bitcoin Core. A monoculture is easy to capture. So yes, on this narrow axis, BTC's fundamentals are better than when Core was a totally unchallenged monoculture. That's one of the few genuine positives. 2) Why Bitcoin influencers almost never give this picture A) Their income, identity, and status = "number go up" Most big Bitcoin voices have: - Bags (obvious). - Revenue tied to: Courses / coaching ("how to hodl / self-custody / retire with BTC / BTC inheritance"), Bitcoin Treasury Companies, Conferences, merch, subs, referrals, sponsorships, Speaking gigs premised on being a maximalist voice. If they seriously said: - "Look, BTC's sovereignty is under coordinated pressure; paperization and regulatory capture are real; upside is path-dependent on state behavior," they would: - Lose a big chunk of their audience (no one wants nuance, they want certainty). - Threaten their own business model (fear + hopium sells, balanced realism does not). - Risk ostracization inside the tribe (maxi culture punishes deviations). So they rationalize: - Any negative is "short-term noise". - Any structural attack is "bullish because it means we're winning". - Any critique is "FUD". Incentives > ideals. Full stop. B) Audience capture & algorithm design Platforms reward strong, one-sided emotional narratives. "Ugly candle but fundamentals stronger than ever" outperforms: "Mixed structural picture: some fundamentals up, some under attack". Audience selection: - People who need BTC to be salvation filter into those feeds. - Over time, the creator optimizes for retention: more hopium, less doubt. If they suddenly became fully objective, their audience would either leave or revolt. That's the prison. C) Cognitive dissonance / sunk cost Most of these guys: - Went all-in socially and financially. - Built their entire identity on "Bitcoin fixes this". Admitting: - "BTC is being co-opted as a controlled, paperized SoV and its true sovereign potential is under active containment" is psychologically brutal. So the mind does what it always does: selective blindness + glorious narrative spin. 3) My best attempt to steelman "fundamentals stronger every day" If I had to steelman that tweet, the strongest points: - Global knowledge / Lindy effect: more people, companies, and states now know BTC exists and treat it as an asset; it hasn't died; that's real Lindy. - Infra maturity: wallets, custody solutions, multisig, hardware devices, and analytics tools are better than they were 5–7 years ago. - Implementation plurality: Knots vs Core, other clients exist — less monoculture. - Regulated access: ETFs / brokers make it easier for large pools to get exposure (even though this as a double-edged sword). Bitcoin is stronger as productized financial exposure, weaker as off-grid monetary counter-system. 4) A more accurate statement would be: - BTC's monetary design fundamentals (fixed supply, issuance) are intact and robust. - BTC's institutional acceptability as a paperized SoV is increasing. - BTC's sovereignty fundamentals (MoE freedom, censorship resistance, self-custody share, uncaptured infra) are under sustained attack and not obviously "stronger every day". - Influencers mostly cannot say this because their incentives, audience, and identities punish that level of honesty. I have explained this in more detail here - https://controlplanecapital.com/p/what-made-me-sell-most-of-my-bitcoin Perhaps this is obvious but unfounded hopium does more harm than good. You can't expect the community to address issues they don't know exist.